Stars: Francois Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Cargol, Francoise Seigner, Jean Daste, Annie Miller

Director: Francois Truffaut

Summary: A touching and philosophical film, set in the 18th century and based on the diaries of real-life French doctor Jean Itard. Itard fought authorities for the right to take charge of the social and intellectual education of a wild child--a young boy who somehow had managed to survive, alone and uncared for, in nature. Although most of the medical establishment felt that the child, who could not speak and often exhibited violent behaviour, was hopelessly retarded, the tenacious Itard, with techniques sometimes kind and frequently cruel, managed to prove them wrong.

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An ingenious and poignant experience, Francois Truffaut's fascinating The Wild Childis based on a real-life 18th-century behavioural scientist's efforts to turn a feral boy into a civilised specimen. In a piece of resonant casting that immediately turns this story into an echo of the creative process, Truffaut himself plays Dr Itard, a specialist in the teaching of the deaf. Itard takes in a young lad (Jean-Pierre Cargol) found to have been living like an animal in the woods all his life. In the spirit of social experiment, Itard uses rewards and punishments to retool the boy's very existence into something that will impress the world. Beautifully photographed in black and white and making evocative use of such charmingly antiquated filmmaking methods as the iris shot, The Wild Childhas a semi-documentary form that barely veils Truffaut's confessional slant.

What does it mean to turn the raw material of life into a monument to one's own experience and bias? The question has all sorts of intriguing reverberations when one considers that Truffaut's own wild childhood was rescued by love of the cinema and that a degree of verisimilitude factors into his films starring Jean-Pierre Leaud--the troubled lad who grew up in Truffaut's work from The 400 Blowsonward. (The Wild Childis dedicated to Leaud.) --Tom Keogh

Main Language:	French
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Trailer - 1. Original Theatrical Trailer
Year:	1970
Release Date:	August 4, 2003
Runtime:	83 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	16882 D V D
Keywords:	Wild, Child, Subtitled, General, Wide, Screen, Drama, Aka, L'enfant, Sauvage
Genre:	Drama